It’s no secret by now that most of the influences in all aspects of my life come from my childhood. One of the biggest parts of my childhood was TV. I watched so much TV that I should be a fat and lazy pieces of crap. Thankfully to having a high metabolism, I am skinnier than hell! Anyways, when it came to watching TV on the weekends, all the local channels would stop airing their cartoons and shows by 10 or 11am! There was nothing to watch after that, at least there wasn’t until we got cable! After that, a whole new world opened up to me, and I was introduced to Nickelodeon. Once X-Men was finished over on Fox Kids, I would immediately flip it over to Nickelodeon and enjoy a whole weekend’s worth of television awesomeness.

Right after I flipped it over, it would usually be some kind of game show. It usually was something like Wild and Crazy Kids, Legends of the Hidden Temple or GUTS. This is one of the things that made Nickelodeon stand out from the crowd, they had amazing game shows. Others that I loved besides the one’s I mentioned were Nick Arcade, Finder’s Keepers, Double Dare, What Would You Do and Figure It Out. These shows weren’t dumbed down for kids either, some of the shows were actually pretty challenging. I recall not seeing many people actually win the final challenge on Legends of the Hidden Temple. Most of these shows had awesome tasks, that I wish I could have done back then, and a lot of it involved that awesome green slime that Nickelodeon is known for. What the heck happened to stuff like this? It’s not around anymore!

You can’t mention Nickelodeon without mentioning their awesome cartoons. Doug, Rugrats, Aaahh!! Real Monsters, Ren and Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, Hey Arnold, Kablam! and I am probably forgetting a lot more, but those are the ones I liked! These shows were all great, and sometimes pretty strange. I go back and re-watch some of these shows and wonder how some of the stuff was allowed on a kids network! It’s amazing to me how Nickelodeon wasn’t afraid to go into different and weird territories. This was a time, not just at Nickelodeon, were there were so many amazing cartoons kids could watch. Nick still makes a few good cartoons like Spongebob, Fairly Odd Parents and Avatar, and that’s about the only good thing Nick has going for them these days!

All of these other things I have discussed above would be great for any kids network, but I really think that it was Nickelodeon’s live shows that really made it one of the best kid’s networks ever. There were shows like The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, All That, Salute Your Shorts, Hey Dude!, Land of the Lost, Space Cases, and even the girly shows like Clarissa Explains it All, and The Secret World of Alex Mac were all amazing. These shows were groundbreaking. If you go back and watch Pete and Pete over again, you will still be able to see how amazing that show is, and it hasn’t lost it’s charm at all. Even certain episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark? are somewhat scary. Nickelodeon didn’t dumb down their shows at all, and pushed the limits of what you could do with a kid’s television show. They even had a special block on saturday nights called SNICK that every single kid would watch, ever saturday. It was an amazing time for these kids of shows, and it’s sad to see the state that Nickelodeon is in right now.

I know people always say that the shows they watched when they were a kid were better, but have you seen the crap Nick is putting out? They are taking the crapy Disney “Tween” approach and have almost completely forgotten the kid of shows that made them what they are today. I’m just glad I was able to experience something like this when I was a kid. Although it’s not 100% evident in my art and designs, this is what I grew up on and Nickelodeon had a huge impact on me and continues to have and impact on me. I’m gald that you can get some of these shows on DVD or even through iTunes, but I wont be happy until I can own all of these shows.